IHI Names Premier Inc. as a Partner in the 5 Million Lives Campaign to Reduce Medical Harm

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The Premier Inc. healthcare alliance today announced that it has been named a partner in the Institute for Healthcare Improvements 5 Million Lives Campaign, a national campaign to dramatically reduce incidents of medical harm in U.S. hospitals. The 5 Million Lives Campaign asks hospitals to improve the care they provide in order to protect patients from 5 million incidents of medical harm over a 24-month period, ending Dec. 9, 2008. Premier is one of 16 campaign partners.

The 5 Million Lives Campaign builds upon the success of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, in which 3,100 participating hospitals reduced inpatient deaths by an estimated 122,000 in 18 months. More than 900 Premier member and client hospitals helped save an estimated 35,000 lives in IHIs 100,000 Lives Campaign.

The new campaign will promote the adoption of up to 12 improvements in care that can save lives and reduce patient injuries, and it aims to enroll even more hospitals than participated in the previous campaign. New interventions targeted at reducing harm include the prevention of MRSA infections and the reduction of surgical complications.

Premier and its members and clients are proud to be a partner in this aggressive campaign, and we look forward to building off the successes that we achieved in the 100,000 Lives Campaign, said Stephanie Alexander, senior vice president and general manager for Premier Healthcare Informatics. We are confident that Premier and membership can and will improve their practices in and around infection control and prevention and, most importantly, save patient lives.

Premier recently acquired Cereplex, Inc., which provides breakthrough technology to prevent outbreaks of infection and protect patients by continuously tracking hospital infections and antibiotic use via Web-based reporting tools, to support its ongoing effort to make healthcare safer and more effective. Hospitals using Premiers antibiotic monitoring system have reported reducing antibiotic costs as much as 23 percent through reduction in inappropriate use of the increasingly costly drugs.

No one in healthcare can feel comfortable with the magnitude of infections, adverse drug events and other complications that hospital patients endure. Dozens of organizations and programs are now working to reduce that toll. They deserve encouragement. This campaign joins those efforts, and seeks leverage and scale that our nation has never had before to make care safe everywhere, said Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, president and CEO of the IHI. We can, and we will, equip all willing healthcare providers with the tools they need to make the motto First, do no harm a reality.

Participating hospitals plan to implement and continue working on the following interventions as part of their participation in the 5 Million Lives Campaign:

-- Prevent methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection;

-- Reduce harm from high-alert medications;

-- Reduce surgical complications by reliably implementing the changes in care recommended by the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP);

-- Prevent pressure ulcers;

-- Deliver reliable, evidence-based care for congestive heart failure;

-- Get boards on board;

-- Deploy Rapid Response Teams;

-- Deliver reliable, evidence-based care for acute myocardial infarction;

-- Prevent adverse drug events;

-- Prevent central line infections;

-- Prevent surgical site infections;

-- Prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Source: Premier Inc.